Leonard C Suskin's musings on writing, parenthood, and the wonderful world of commercial AV.

Friday, October 7, 2016

Nightmare Fuel 2016, Day the Seventh - Mirror, Mirror

Number eight out of seven. This one is more literal than yesterday's SF piece.

Mirror, Mirror

"In case you've not guessed, it spoke to me. Surely you can see the draw, or we wouldn't be here."

I nodded mutely. I'd have loved it anyway. Loved the oval frame, thick and ornate with dark bronze shining through where the gold leave was worn away. Loved the surreal brightness the silvered mirror gave the room around me, even tolerated the slightly diminished quality of my own reflection, at times when the mirror-companion faded to the background.

The companion had said that part would get better, and it had. Now when I see myself I almost look like myself.

Today the mirror-spirit admonished me - gently - that I'd never asked about him. About how he came to dwell beneath the mirror's surface.

"So… you weren't created by a wizard or something? You found your own way into the mirror? I always guessed you were part of it."

"Sometimes there were appeals to vanity, sometimes a bit more. Sometimes I'd wander this side of the looking glass, like the girl from the book. But it's lonely on this side, when the ones on your side step away from the mirror. There've been others before you, but they grew bored."

I shook my head. "That doesn't seem possible."

The mirror-spirit shook its head. "Mirrors so often appeal to vanity. Who wants a mirror in which ones visage is washed-out like an old painting left in the sun too long, its pigments long faded."

I laughed. "You said that would get better. And it did. Show me my face."

The mirror spirit faded out, my reflection faded in. True, it had once appeared thin and faded but now… now this looked like a normal mirror. "See? They were fools. They could have had a magic mirror and seen themselves therein."

My reflection laughed, turned on its heel and walked out the door - a doorway which I suddenly noticed was not reversed as it should be in a mirror. I turned behind me, so nothing but a silvery haze.

My reflection strode out the door as I beat my hands against unyielding silvered glass.